Eric’s Sunday Sermon; Love and Easter

Love and Easter go hand in hand. I have never had an Easter without love. And with love every day is like Easter. Not to mention I love Easter. One of the things I love about Easter is the egg hunting. Another thing I love about Easter is church. I just love rituals, and the more complex the better. I love the Hats on Easter.

This year we have no rituals. Strange. I hope there are plenty folks out there who figured out how to get the eggs to the Easter Bunny, as I would hate to see him lose his job too. One guy who will never lose his job is Jesus. That poor guy couldn’t even get out of doing his job by being crucified. (If that offends you I am so sorry – not!) You see, I do not know what Jesus is to you, but to me He is the pure energy of love. Begotten not made. Jesus is my best friend by far, and He is the embodiment of love. And we all know God has a sense of humor.

So I love Love. Sounds silly even to me to write it. But hey, I just write this stuff I do not create it. January 12^th 2014 was the first Sunday Sermon. My 10 year old would have only been 3 years old. “Almost 4 dad”. I truly do love writing the sermons. I used to love preaching them, well I still do but I just can’t stand the scene of church politics. And you just cannot have one without the other. So sad. But then again not so sad because that is what got me into writing the sermons.

I truly do like church services. I am in my 5^th year of studying the Catechism on line. I am a Lay Eucharistic Minister, I taught Sunday school and of course preached. Never was a Deacon as that is purely political. I really enjoyed being a Canonical lawyer within the Episcopal Church during their schism over gay leaders. I can tell you first hand it is not a violation of the canons. Let’s just say they were going to stone a man for being homosexual. I think Jesus would have told them that he who is without sin cast the first stone. And I can only find vague Biblical references to it being a sin. So not in my book. I mention this for persecution and its fallacy with love.

I surely do pray and hope that these sermons exude love. They are designed to do just that. Get doctrine, ritual and politics and kick them to the curb.

No citing scripture. Yet I get comments where a scripture is referenced to me, that is exactly where I got the insight that I wrote about. There is this really cool Latin term; Res Ipsa Loquitor. Doesn’t that make me sound all smart? Anyhow it means “the thing speaks for itself”. I think the Bible speaks well enough for itself. You don’t need me telling you. Besides there are so many people who do it far better than I. I know some writers who make full articles out of collections of quotes from the Bible. They are really good at it. I love to read those. But the good ones don’t tell you what to think about them, they have their own message. Dharma is the same.

I love children. I love old people. I love the air. I love rivers and the oceans. I love people I have never met. Did I tell you that I like crazy people? I learn from them to look at things a new way. I pray for them though as some crazy leads to fully regrettable decisions and actions.

Let me try and give you an explanation of love. The first is that it is not a “doing” but rather a “being”. It exists in totality within us. We can say like above that we love this and that but love has to be who we are. Love is a space within us that we call the heart. Probably love is a feeling and therefor mental. But that diminishes love by putting it in a box. Love is omnipresent and omnipotent.

It is said in nearly all religions that we are all but lessor gods. Makes logical sense. If God is Love and we have love in our space then we have God within us.

Now here is a sticky one. If you do not love what you are doing then do not do it. Of course we all cannot love our jobs. But as I mentioned before love is not a doing it is a being. It then becomes obvious that if we are being love it does not matter what we are doing for we are “in” love. And then no matter what we do we love it. If you think things and actions make you joyful, think again.

A good spot to tackle that concept of loving your enemies. I call friends when I fall out of love. Like in dealing with adverse folks. They throw my crappola back in my face and that space gets filled with love again and people are no longer adverse but rather properly different. Keeping in mind that a loving soul does not a doormat make. But like a job that does not make you happy, “enemies” cannot make love unhappy, it just does not work that way. You have to kick out some love in order to make room for anything else. We do it. So call a friend.

Loved ones. Now that is a great term. And we have them. This is as it should be. But in essence even a perceived enemy should be a loved one. Yikes, talk about easier said than done.

The big shut up. I am the only person I know that can listen while speaking. We are talking years of practice and practice. It is like a split brain. (some would have a more derogatory psycho type word for it ;-) It is fully exhausting to a point of horrible headaches. The point being that it is far better to shut up and listen. Love demands it. Besides that it really pisses people off when you talk over them. Not very loving. I used it when I was paid to win arguments. And it is loving to really concentrate and listen to who is speaking. Try it, you will like it. Forget thinking about what you are going to say.

Essence of love. Explanations and definitions are too simple for love. Love is not a thing or verb or adjective. Love is an is. I set my mind to it and when I was angry went out and smelled my roses. Two things of note. First they did not smell as sweet at first. Second is that the anger floated away and soon the roses smelled sweet again. Maybe I wanted it to be so. But either way it is true. And nothing wrong with wanting roses to smell sweet. Part of the essence of love is that you can will it to be. Funny but about 50% of the time you need to try to be in love. And like I said above “a little help from our friends”. I reckon the roses are my friends.

Why Easter? We are hunkered down in place. Isolated and restricted. For some the depths of despair. A darkest hour for so many. Somewhat like our disciples until Easter. Well Easter stands for the resurrection of what appears lost. Today you can rise up in love. You can resurrect the love in you. The bad job or the enemy does not control love. Love is never gone. Love is alive.